Free-to-Use Building Materials
This article refers to a type of infinite building materials that: #All players have access to as soon as they create a character. #Never need to be replenished. #Though unlimited in quantity, they offer access to limited textures. All included textures will have an infinity symbol (instead of numbers) in the Materials Tray. Overview Building materials of this kind have earned the name 'free-to-use,' because as long as you use materials of this type and of these textures, you are free to use them without a time 'cost' to replenish supplies. This article aims to explain how to identify materials of this type not only because they are generally useful, but because they increase the speed and efficiency of building well beyond starting out in Landmark. Relationship to Other Materials To understand how free-to-use building materials work, it helps to understand the ways in which one gets those materials that offer textures beyond the free-to-use options. In Landmark, most building resources come from: #Gathering them with a pick and axe or an extractor. #Using Lumens to "buy" them through the Lumen Station or by agreeing to purchase them via a prompt when placing Designs if resources are still needed. #Looting any either common loot chests, Lost Chests, or Lost Crystals. #From defeating monsters (to a lesser extent). Confused Terminology These building materials are often confused with all Common Materials textures, including those that use the passively mined, common resources: dirt, common stone, sand, ice, and snow. Due to many factors, 'common materials' and 'free-to-use materials' are not interchangeable concepts. Though a few textures grouped with the Common Materials in the materials tray of Build Mode are included with free-to-use textures, the vast majority of the Common Materials are not of this type. Instead, resources must be gathered to use majority of the textures grouped with the Common Materials. Furthermore, Landmark has uncommon stone (e.g. marble) and gemstone that are incorrectly interchanged with the generalized term "stone" by some players and searching the mega palette in Build Mode is problematic. Searching the materials in Build Mode using generalized names will return results for textures that include: uncommon stone, common stone, other Common Materials (e.g. sandstone - which uses sand!), and the free-to-use textures. :See the 'Gathering' page section about Passive Gathering for details. About Textures Though they are referred to as free-to-use building materials, it is more accurate to think of them as free-to-use textures. This is primarily because of the way the resources are grouped in the materials tray while in Build Mode. Th vast majority textures included in this type are direct mimics of the natural terrain seen in every biome found in Landmark. Though materials generally are grouped by how they are gathered (active/passive) there are times when those groupings overlap. For example, you will find some of the free-to-use building materials grouped within the Masonry category, even though the majority of the masonry textures are from actively gathered resources like uncommon stone (e.g. Marble) and extra common stone. Purposes The obvious use for these textures is terraforming to completely alter the look of the natural terrain around your designs. If you use these as the building materials while experimenting, you never have to worry about exhausting your supplies. Beyond the obvious, they are also exceptionally useful when you are experimenting with the Building Tools or preparing to start fresh on a new build site, because you can save the experiments and your soon-to-be packed build site as design that can be placed easily later. To make the most of this, paint as much as you can with the free-to-use textures. When you want to place designs again, whether days or years later, you will not need to gather more building materials to do so, should you find your supplies low. Examples Terrain Textures As of 2016 there are over 100 textures in this category. The vast majority of these are part of the unlimited, free-to-use building materials. All textures in this category can all be seen in the various biomes in the landscapes around you. They mimic natural terrain materials as they would appear if you were to find them in the real world. *Dirt - this category includes obvious soil, but also includes some parched earth textures and come groundcover (e.g. clover, fallen leaves). *Common Stone - stone of this kind generally mimics cave walls and mountain sides, but some are gravel and pebbles. *Sand - all of these textures are those seen on beaches, in deserts, and also include some cracked surfaces that are sandy *Snow - there are only two types of snow: (regular) snow and dirty snow. The latter looks as though dirt from the ground below has seeped into the mix *Ice - there are four types of ice in this category, all of which look like naturally occurring ice. :Click any of the images to see the examples enlarged. File:Dirt-textures-example.png|Examples of Terrain dirt (soil). File:Stone-common-textures-example.png|Examples of Terrain stone. File:Sand-textures-example.png|Examples of Terrain sand. File:Common-snow-examples.jpg|Examples of Terrain snow. File:Ice-unlimited-examples.png|Ice Common Finished Textures A finished textures is any texture that mimics real-world building materials that are specially selected like slabs of stone or those that mimic real-world artisan finishing techniques. *In Landmark these textures tend to include those which look like literal brickwork, but may feature textures that mimic trim, pavers, and intentionally smoothed surfaces. Some of the gray slate textures are included in the free-to-use building materials, along with a few that mimic carved stone and basic masonry. As of 2016 these include: 6 slate textures in various shades of gray, 1 masonry texture in gray, and one craved stone look in gray. Examples of some of the free-to-use finished textures: Other Information Because stone is a such a common resource it can be found pretty much anywhere. *For special/uncommon stone that must be mined from deposits see the Mining Guide. Category:Building